538: Clinton?s debate performance is helping her in swing states

by Cameron Slater on October 2, 2016 at 12:30pm

Everything since the first debate has been bad news for Trump. ?Nate Silver adds to the drama.

National polls conducted since Monday?s presidential debate have shown Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump by an average of about 4 percentage points ? a meaningful improvement from?her position before the debate, when she led by just 1 or 2 points. Now, it?s becoming clearer that battleground state polls are moving toward Clinton as well. These include the first results since the debate from high-quality, live-caller telephone polls; the numbers we?d been getting earlier this week were all from online or automated polls.

Here?s what I wrote?on Thursday?about what we might expect to see in swing state polls, assuming that Clinton led Trump by 3 to 5 percentage points nationally, as national polls seem to show:

A 4- to 8-point lead in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Colorado, Virginia, Wisconsin and Michigan, which have been slightly bluer than the national average this cycle.

Somewhere between a tie and a 4-point Clinton lead in Florida and North Carolina, which have been slightly redder than the national average.

A roughly tied race in Ohio and Iowa, which have been significantly redder than the national average.

As you can see, these results are pretty much exactly what we?d expect with a Clinton lead of 3 to 5 percentage points nationally. In fact, they?re mostly toward the high end of the range, which means that her lead over Trump nationally could eventually turn out to be more like 5 points than 3 points as more data comes in.

You may notice that I?ve focused on the top line numbers (?Clinton?s up by 4?) instead of trend lines (?she?s gained 2 points?) in these last couple of?updates, because with trend lines there?s more to keep track of. The period from Sept. 11 through the Sept. 26 debate was one of Clinton?s worst polling stretches of the year, for example, so a new survey from a pollster that last tested the race in that period will probably show Clinton gaining ground since then. But if a pollster had last surveyed a state in early August, when she was up by 7 or 8 percentage points nationally, you?d still expect Clinton to lose ground since then.

Our models keeps track of all this stuff, of course, although they may not yet have Clinton?s debate bounce fully priced in. Her chances of winning have risen to?67 percent?in our polls-only model and?64 percent?in polls-plus. But our hyper-aggressive now-cast has Clinton?s popular vote lead at?4.1 percentage points, as compared with?3.1 points?in the polls-only model. Since the now-cast doesn?t need as much data to show a big change, the gap implies that Clinton has some further room to grow in polls-plus and polls-only if we get more polls confirming the results we?ve seen over the past couple days.

People have said that Trump was sandbagging the first debate. ?But the polls are indicating that isn’t a good strategy. ?Perhaps his team need to have the confidence to let him off the leash.

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.